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VIP sex cases link to false memory

Experts slam controversial therapy

James Gillespie and Tim Rayment

October 18 2015, 1:01am, The Sunday Times

Graham Wilmer, with wife Barbara, defends the therapy his charity uses, in which counsellors tell patients about their own experiences. He says standard counselling did not work for the people he helps (JILL JENNING)

TWO key witnesses cham­pioned by the deputy Labour leader Tom Watson in the VIP paedophile sex abuse scandal are being helped by a charity that uses a controversial ther­apy experts fear could generate false memories.

The therapy, in which the victims are given the details of the effects of sex abuse suffered by their own counsellor, has prompted concerns of a repeat of previous scandals in which “recovered mem­ory” played a part in false claims of child abuse in cases such as the Orkney satanic ritual case in 1991.

Matthew Scott, a barrister who has worked on a number of child abuse cases, said: “It would be hard to devise a form of counselling more fraught with the danger of producing unreliable evidence.”

The therapy,…

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